In its complaint before the ITC, Nokia claims that Apple has illegally taken advantage of technology that the Finnish phone manufacturer developed. The allegation is that Apple infringed seven separate Nokia patents in implementing iPhone, iPod and Mac camera, antenna and power management functionality, as well as elements of the user interface. "These patented technologies are important to Nokia's success as they allow better user experience, lower manufacturing costs, smaller size and longer battery life for Nokia products," the company said in a statement.

Paul Melin, Nokia's general manager of patent licensing, drew a distinction between this action and Nokia's earlier lawsuit, filed at the US District Court in Delaware.

While our litigation in Delaware is about Apple's attempt to free-ride on the back of Nokia investment in wireless standards, the ITC case filed today is about Apple's practice of building its business on Nokia's proprietary innovation. [...] Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in small electronic devices. This action is about protecting the results of such pioneering development.

The Delaware lawsuit accused Apple of infringing 10 patents covering wireless data transfer, speech coding, security and encryption, and said their patents had been "infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007." Apple struck back in December, suing Nokia for infringing on Apple's patents. The California computer maker sought to have Nokia's lawsuit dismissed, saying argued that it was not infringing on Nokia's patents... and that even if a court found them guilty of infringing,anyway Nokia had not offered fair licensing terms.

Industry experts note that this legal back-and-forth in a fairly common tactic when licensing negotiations have broken down, and believe that Nokia is playing hardball to get royalty payments from Apple in the $6 to $12 US range for each iPhone sold.